Do You Really Need Search on your Website?
Gerry McGovern :
Gerry McGovern (a content management expert) asks 'Do you really need search on your website?' saying:
You need to be doing ongoing analysis and refinement to ensure that your customers get the best possible results. If you don’t have the time to do that work, why have a search engine?
The thing is that, if you remove search, you remove the ability for users to easily create a custom page that matches their interests. Why does this matter? Well, it might not right now, but once RSS aggregators become usable (ala iTunes), users will expect to be able to create custom feeds to receive notification of new, relevant, content is posted to your site, for example when a product becomes available.
As it goes, I do agree that you must always weigh-up all aspects of your user experience and refine your interface, as Alan Cooper's Axiom goes, 'No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better'. But what if search does help people, should you not make an effort to improve it?